Emerging Media (B.S.)

Do you want to create the next Twitter, Facebook, or foursquare? Design a new app or video game? Launch a new media venture? The current media landscape is constantly shifting, with a steady influx of new technologies, platforms, and economic models. So how do you learn to navigate an industry that’s always evolving? It’s clear that today’s media requires an understanding of both communications and technology. Our new program in emerging media will give you a strong foundation in both, teaching you to integrate artistic creativity, computational expertise, and business savvy.

You’ll start with the basics -- a required core of courses in computer science, television-radio, and strategic communication. Whether you want to focus your studies on technology and programming, design and production, or the business and marketing aspects of emerging media, our program offers you the flexibility to take your education in the direction you want.

If you’re into the technology side of emerging media, you’ll enroll in the media computation concentration, and you’ll earn your degree from Ithaca College’s School of Humanities and Sciences. You’ll study discrete structures, data structures, and algorithms, and choose from such courses as Advanced Web Programming, Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, and Intelligent Systems.

More interested in developing content and figuring out how best to present it? Enroll in the media design and production concentration through IC’s Roy H. Park School of Communications. You’ll learn about story, audio, production, and aesthetics. Then you’ll go more in-depth in topics such as game development, e-learning, animation, and website design.

If the business and marketing aspects of new media interest you, enroll in the media entrepreneurship concentration, also offered through the Park School. You’ll study the economics of new media, the global flow of media, marketing, and quantitative research methods.

Regardless of your concentration, during your junior and senior year, you’ll work with other emerging media majors on two group media projects that will give you hands-on experience with project design, development, implementation, and testing. You’ll also do market analysis and learn about team dynamics, mirroring the actual processes used in high-tech companies.

As a graduate of the program -- whether you want to be a designer or creator of media and technology or an entrepreneur starting a new media business -- you’ll know how to identify market opportunities, conceptualize products, and employ storytelling structures. You’ll have proficiency in programming and using software tools, and you’ll know how to develop sound economic models and promote the kinds of organizational and consumer change that make new media innovations successful. Most importantly, you’ll have a skill set to work in existing media and the capability to imagine – and even introduce to the world -- what might come next.